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Theodicy in a Deterministic Universe: God and the Problem of Suffering in Vyāsatīrtha’s Tātparyacandrikā

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Abstract

The classical traditions of Vedānta in India explored the problem of why an omnipotent being like God would permit sentient beings to suffer in His creation. This article explores the solution provided to the problem of suffering by the sixteenth-century philosopher Vyāsatīrtha. Vyāsatīrtha argued that there is a satisfying explanation of why God would permit suffering to both exist and to be unevenly distributed among the individual souls trapped in transmigratory existence. He claims that we can only reconcile the idea of an independent, omnipotent God with the existence of suffering by assuming that God’s treatment of the individual souls is based primarily in their eternal, immutable ethical natures and not purely on their conduct/karma as some earlier philosophers suggested. The article is based on original translations of the passages in the Tātparyacandrikā where Vyāsatīrtha makes these arguments against his Advaita and Viśiṣṭādvaita opponents.

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Acknowledgments

This article was completed within the framework of the FWF-funded project “Religion and Reason in the Vedānta Traditions of Medieval India” (project number 30622).

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  1. Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Hollandstraße 11-13, 1020, Vienna, Austria

    Michael T. Williams

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Correspondence to Michael T. Williams.

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Williams, M.T. Theodicy in a Deterministic Universe: God and the Problem of Suffering in Vyāsatīrtha’s Tātparyacandrikā. Hindu Studies 25, 199–228 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11407-021-09304-9

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